9781422285145

(Australia, 1931) to become the world’s largest automobile company. The youngest of the Big Three was Chrysler that was set up by former Buick president and GM Company in 1920 and transformed it into Chrysler Corporation five years later before adding Dodge to his stable. By the time the 1930s had arrived, the Plymouth and DeSoto marques had been launched executive Walter Chrysler. He acquired the Maxwell Motor As the industry grew, so did the workforce, with tens of thousands of jobs being created, but the Great Depression of the 1930s hit automobile manufacturing just as much as the rest of the country, and many smaller companies went out of business. Demand grew following the Second World War, with the automobile becoming an essential household (and business) item. This led to Americans becoming more mobile and meant that families could live further away from their workplace, resulting in a housing boom as the construction of suburbs outside city limits dramatically increased. and Chrysler had overtaken Ford to become the second largest manufacturer.

 ABOVE:  Henry Ford pictured in 1904.  BELOW:  The 25,000

employees of the Ford Motor Company, Detroit, Michigan, USA, pose for a group photograph in front of the factory buildings. At the time, this was the largest group of employees ever gathered before a photographer at the (then) largest automobile works in the world – producing 1,000 automobiles a day.

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Australia, England, and Germany. General Motors Corporation was founded in 1908 and quickly absorbed established manufacturers such as Buick, Cadillac, Oakland (which would become Pontiac), and Oldsmobile. A merger with Ford fell through but GM carried on with their expansion program with the acquisition of Chevrolet, and foreign manufacturers Vauxhall Motors (England in 1925), Opel (Germany, 1929), and Holden